Sex education is to be made a compulsory part of the national curriculum in primary and secondary schools under government plans to cut teen pregnancies and sexually transmitted diseases.
A new personal, social and health education (PSHE) curriculum, expected by 2010, will include compulsory sex and relationships education as well as better advice warning children against drugs and alcohol.
Children will learn about body parts and the fact that animals reproduce from the age of five, puberty and intercourse from the age of seven and contraception and abortion from the age of 11.
Schools will not be allowed to opt out of the rules but the government is promising separate guidance to faith schools, which could find elements of the new curriculum at odds with their spiritual beliefs.
The schools minister, Jim Knight, said they would still have to teach the curriculum – which includes contraception, abortion and homosexuality – but will separately be allowed to continue to teach religious beliefs about sex.
Knight said he wanted all schools to teach children more about sex in the context of relationships, including marriage and civil partnerships, and to promote abstinence.
